What!!!

'Indispensable' scammers

Here's a glaring red light: Subway work ers have been falsifying signal inspec tion reports for decades, says NYC Transit President Thomas Prendergast.

The con appears to be routine business for more than 90 percent of the 1,600 inspectors, Prendergast admitted to the City Council on Thursday.

But he says a crackdown is impossible, as only a "very small universe" is properly trained in signal work.

How about that.

Only 1,600 people know how to fake subway signal inspections -- and none can be fired because faking inspections is work too complicated to be left to mere amateurs.

But it gets worse: MTA investigators have known about the problem for over a decade, but nothing's been done to fix it.

Still Prendergast is unmoved, claiming that mass firings would put the public at risk -- though how the risk would be any greater than what a 90 percent fraud rate generates isn't clear.

Faking an inspection report, by the way, is a felony, and we trust that the relevant district attorneys are fully involved by now.

Right?

Criminality aside, a battalion of MTA worthies has been pulling down full salary and benefits to do 10 percent of its defined work for at least 10 years.

Not to worry, Prendergast equivocates, because the problem is "a failure of senior management. It's not a failure of any employees."

There is no more senior a manager at the Transit Authority than Tom Prendergast -- and if he's not to be held accountable, then MTA Chairman Jay Walder himself needs to be.

Posthaste.